The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Brace yourselves, commuters: Metro’s year-long maintenance blitz is set to begin

June 2, 2016 at 6:29 p.m. EDT

For decades, political leaders, Metro board members and others overseeing the region’s transit agency deferred major maintenance, allowing the rail system to deteriorate until it became failure-prone and often hazardous.

Now riders are about to pay a price for that neglect.

Metro's SafeTrack maintenance blitz is set to begin Saturday, with 15 repair and rebuilding projects to be conducted over 10 months — a schedule that guarantees headaches for hundreds of thousands of riders who use the system daily.

Beginning at midnight, weekend revelers accustomed to a 3 a.m. closing will need to find another way home. No more late-night closings.

The first to experience the daily aggravation of SafeTrack-related delays and crowded trains and platforms will be Orange and Silver line riders in Virginia.

Metro's plan to overhaul the transit system officially begins on June 4. Here's what Silver Line riders need to know about how the repairs will affect them. (Claritza Jimenez,Danielle Kunitz/The Washington Post)

With Metro’s big rebuild project looming, some in Washington are still in denial

The projects, or “surges,” are catch-up work designed to help restore the 40-year-old system to what the transit industry calls “a state of good repair.” Scheduled to be conducted one after another until mid-March, the surges will involve shutting down sections of rail lines during some of the work and reducing train traffic at other times.

Because all the surges will cause service disruptions, riders will hear plenty of advisories like the one issued recently about the first surge, set for June 4 through June 16. “Orange and Silver line trains may be very crowded, especially during rush hour due to severe service reductions,” Metro warned. The agency is suggesting that commuters find alternative transportation or try to avoid traveling during rush hour.

“Expect significantly longer wait times at the following stations: Vienna, Dunn Loring, West Falls Church, Ballston, East Falls Church, Wiehle-Reston East, Spring Hill, Greensboro, Tysons Corner, McLean.”

With those delays looming, and other big inconveniences ahead for commuters elsewhere in the system, preparations have begun to try to mitigate the hassles.

Metro’s “SafeTrack” maintenance blitz will cause prolonged rail delays.

Metro will beef up bus service, as will Washington-area jurisdictions that operate suburban bus routes. The ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft have poured millions of dollars into promotional campaigns to entice patrons and encourage their drivers to be more active. And Capital Bikeshare said it will add bicycles and racks at Metro stations affected by the series of maintenance projects. It’s also adding a Bikeshare station.

Metro's plan to overhaul the transit system officially begins on June 4. Here's what Orange Line riders need to know about how the repairs will affect them. (Claritza Jimenez,Danielle Kunitz/The Washington Post)

“This will not be easy, and we need to make sure that we are being flexible and responsive,” Sharon Bulova (D), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said at a news conference last week detailing the county’s plans. Fairfax, the region’s largest jurisdiction, will be impacted by 10 of the 15 projects.

“Right now we have a crisis,” Bulova said, referring to chronic, occasionally dangerous subway problems, including frequent track fires and train breakdowns.

During SafeTrack, Metro plans to install about 50,000 new rail ties, clean 87,000 feet of drains, plug hundreds of water leaks and fix or replace thousands of pieces of infrastructure in the 117-mile system, including rails, electrical insulators, power cables and the connector assemblies used to attach cables to one another.

Metro at age 40: A mess of its own making.

“The system is deteriorating big time,” Bulova said. “We need to do what we need to do to make [it] . . . the kind of system we can rely upon.”

The region’s commuter railroads, MARC and Virginia Railway Express, are planning for a jump in ridership. Some businesses in the area are stockpiling laptops and testing their remote computer networks for employees who decide to work from home.

As for possibly changing traffic rules, such as easing HOV restrictions to accommodate more motorists, officials said they are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Here’s Metro’s SafeTrack schedule

“Our emphasis is going to be on ride-sharing and additional transit services,” said Virginia Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne. “We think it’s going to be tough, obviously. [But] HOV changes may make it worse. That’s what we’re concerned about.”

However, he said, “none of that is set in stone. A month from now we might have to do something different. I don’t think anybody knows exactly what’s going happen.”

For 13 days starting Saturday, round-the-clock track work will be conducted between Metro’s Ballston and East Falls Church stations, forcing trains headed in both directions to share one track on that stretch of the rail system.

That translates to nine workdays of single-tracking, causing delays not only in that area but also in other parts of the system because of the ripple effect of reduced service.

Orange and Silver line trains normally run at six- or 12-minute intervals on weekdays, depending on the time of day, and every 20 minutes late at night.

While the track work is going on, Metro said, weekday Orange trains between the Vienna and New Carrollton stations will run only every 18 minutes, with the usual 20-minute intervals late at night. Additional trains will run between Ballston and New Carrollton during rush hours. But those extra trains won’t benefit commuters who use the Vienna, Dunn Loring, West Falls Church and East Falls Church stations.

Read more of the Post’s coverage on SafeTrack and Metro

The frequency of Silver trains also will be reduced to 18 minutes during the project.

The next surge, starting June 18, will force a 16-day shutdown of service along the Orange, Blue and Silver lines from the Eastern Market station to the Benning Road and Minnesota Avenue stations. Blue Line service will be limited to Virginia during that project, and the two other lines will have reduced service, with buses replacing trains.

Then, beginning at 8 p.m. July 5 and lasting through July 11, service on the Yellow and Blue lines will be shut down between the Reagan National Airport and Braddock Road stations. Another shutdown will occur in that area for a week starting July 12, with no service between the airport and the Pentagon City station.

Two more shutdowns are scheduled for the fall and early winter — from Oct. 10 through Nov. 1 between the Red Line’s NoMa-Gallaudet and Fort Totten stations and from Dec. 7 through Dec. 24 on the Blue Line between the Pentagon and Rosslyn stations.

Besides the five shutdowns, there will be 10 periods of prolonged single-tracking in various places across the system, the longest of which, from Sept. 9 through Oct. 20, will be on the Orange Line between Vienna and West Falls Church.

Transportation officials all over the region have been trying to figure out ways to soften the impact of SafeTrack on commuters. Metro said the first project, between Ballston and East Falls Church, is expected to inconvenience about 73,000 riders daily.

Here’s what Fairfax plans to do during SafeTrack

“We don’t anticipate being able to carry 73,000 people on our bus system,” Jack Requa, a senior Metro executive, told Fairfax supervisors last week.

Fairfax officials said they will enhance the Fairfax Connector bus schedules and promote the service as an alternative. They also will start a temporary express shuttle service to accommodate riders from areas such as Reston to Pentagon, to augment Metro’s shuttle buses,when SafeTrack work is underway in the county.

Arlington County said it will add larger buses to routes in Metro work areas. To help buses move faster, the county said it will adjust traffic signals and temporarily restrict street parking in some areas.

Here’s Arlington’s plan for the first surge

Montgomery County has yet to unveil a plan, but County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) said last month they will add buses and adjust traffic signals and parking rules. But he did not sound confident that all will go smoothly during SafeTrack projects in Montgomery.

“You’ll be putting buses into traffic that already cannot move,” he said. “In an area that is already congested, it will have only a limited effect.”

In Prince George’s County, officials said they do not plan to increase local bus service or make any other changes related to SafeTrack.

The District plans a number of measures to ease traffic congestion during SafeTrack, including an expansion of rush-hour parking restrictions in busy bus corridors, a moratorium on some public space construction and a ­$2-per-trip option for users of Capital Bikeshare; the normal cost is $8 per day.

To meet increased demand, the D.C. Taxicab Commission will allow shared riding, allowing drivers to pick up multiple fares within one mile of a Metro station. The option allows cab drivers to pick up multiple passengers who don’t know one another and are going to different locations.

Meanwhile, traffic-control officials and police will establish a shared traffic-control headquarters to monitor and reduce congestion. And more traffic-control officers will be put on the streets, officials said.

“I want to stress something very important. The project will affect every single commuter,” D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said at a news conference Thursday. “And no matter if the surge is happening in the District proper or not, we think that Washington, D.C., will be affected by all 10 months of the work.”

Bowser said officials also are exploring extending the D.C. Circulator’s operating hours until 3 a.m on weekends to make up for Metro’s early closing.

Meanwhile, Uber, which has more than 30,000 active drivers in and around Washington, has expanded the coverage area of its cheaper ride-splitting service, UberPOOL, to encompass the entire region. The company also plans to offer bonuses to drivers who pick up passengers in areas where SafeTrack work is underway.

Its rival Lyft slashed fares by 75 percent for its discount ride-splitting option “Lyft Line,” hoping to capitalize on Metro users seeking alternatives. The company said it also will offer half-price rides to first-time users traveling between the District and Northern Virginia during the SafeTrack program.

Capital Bikeshare plans to address the surges one by one. For the first project, for example, a new Bikeshare station will be installed at the East Falls Church Metro station by Saturday, Arlington officials said. Capacity will be added to existing Bikeshare stations in the area, with the bulk of the efforts centered on Ballston.

Across the region, employers concerned about the impact of SafeTrack are scrambling to put backup systems in place. Some are considering buying train tickets on VRE and other transit services or covering Uber or Lyft fares for their employees.

The federal government has given decision-making authority on the issue to individual agencies. “Given the scope, duration, and nature of the rail disruptions, the impact to agencies” will differ, said Samuel Schumach, spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management. “Agencies should make decisions regarding how to adjust.”

For instance, the Arlington-based National Science Foundation, headquartered not far from where the SafeTrack program will begin this weekend, is allowing workers facing miserable commutes to request earlier start times or later quitting times to avoid the crush.

On the first two workdays of the repairs, Monday and Tuesday, NSF staffers may telecommute or take unscheduled leave without making previous arrangements. For the rest of June, employees can ask to work from home more frequently than usual without changing their existing telework documentation.

David Verardo, a climate scientist and president of the agency’s union, American Federation ­of Government Employees Local 3403, said the moves make sense, given that some employees will “find themselves in a bind.”

“One of the things we’re emphasizing is, supervisors and their employees really need to communicate to make this thing work,” Verardo said. “We’re trying to be as flexible as possible while getting the government’s work done.”

Lori Aratani and Michael Laris contributed to this report.